Middle Beyond Extremes contains a translation of the Buddhist masterpiece Distinguishing the Middle from Extremes. This famed text, often referred to by its Sanskrit title, Madhyantavibhaga, is part of a collection known as the Five Maitreya Teachings. Maitreya, the Buddha's regent, is held to have entrusted these profound and vast instructions to the master Asanga in the heavenly realm of Tushita.

Unraveling the subtle processes that condition our thinking and experience, Maitreya's teaching reveals a powerful path of compassionate vision and spiritual transformation. This classic of Indian Buddhism is here presented alongside commentaries by two outstanding masters of Tibet's non-sectarian Rimé movement, Khenpo Shenga and Ju Mipham.

FREEDOM FROM EXTREMES: Gorampa's "Distinguishing the Views" and the Polemics of Emptinessby Khenpo Shenga and Ju Mipham

Middle Beyond Extremes contains a translation of the Buddhist masterpiece Distinguishing the Middle from Extremes. This famed text, often referred to by its Sanskrit title, Madhyantavibhaga, is part of a collection known as the Five Maitreya Teachings. Maitreya, the Buddha's regent, is held to have entrusted these profound and vast instructions to the master Asanga in the heavenly realm of Tushita.

Unraveling the subtle processes that condition our thinking and experience, Maitreya's teaching reveals a powerful path of compassionate vision and spiritual transformation. This classic of Indian Buddhism is here presented alongside commentaries by two outstanding masters of Tibet's non-sectarian Rimé movement, Khenpo Shenga and Ju Mipham.

Unconventional wisdom, affirmation, and advice from one of Tibetan Buddhism's most influential living teachers.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche is a master at explaining Buddhism's radical but effective methods for transforming suffering into happiness, which have been practiced and taught by Tibetans for a thousand years. It's a challenging way to think-how can it be that the things that cause us pain are actually blessings?

In Dear Lama Zopa, Rinpoche applies that challenge to our everyday, real-life problems-from the littlest to the biggest. Every year he receives thousands of letters from people around the world asking for advice-on coping with everything from addiction, grief, and depression, to war, terrorism, and death.

In his detailed and deeply caring responses to these letters, reproduced here, Rinpoche shows again and again that the best method for solving our problems is to radically change the way we perceive them; that by emphasizing their inner causes we can even change the resulting outer circumstances.

Even people familiar with notions like karma and reincarnation, which imply that we are the creators of our own experiences, may find the advice difficult. Yet uncountable thousands of people of all backgrounds have put Rinpoche's loving guidance into practice-and have seen real and positive change in their lives. Now, with Dear Lama Zopa, you can see for yourself.

INTRODUCTION TO EMPTINESS: As Taught in Tsong-kha-pa's Great Treatise on the Stages of the Pathby Guy Newland

Readers are hard-pressed to find books that can help them understand the central concept in Mahayana Buddhism--the idea that ultimate reality is "emptiness." In clear language, Introduction to Emptiness explains that emptiness is not a mystical sort of "nothingness," but a specific truth that can and must be understood through calm and careful reflection.

Newland's contemporary examples and vivid anecdotes will help readers understand this core concept as presented in one of the great classic texts of the Tibetan Tradition, Tsong-kha-pa's Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment.

"Written with illumination from a terrific scholar."--Jeffrey Hopkins, Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia and author of over thirty-five books on Tibetan Buddhism, including his latest work, A Truthful Heart

"This magnificent, readable, and thoroughly engaging work is a modern classic in the making. It invites new practitioners and learned scholars alike to look afresh at the dazzling array of teachings from one of the greatest figures in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Je Tsongkhapa, writing to teach his own students the most profound meaning of all, the core of the path to liberation."--Anne Carolyn Klein, Professor, Rice University; author of Unbounded Wholeness and Meeting the Great Bliss Queen

"Introduction to Emptiness is a marvelously clear, marvelously precise exposition of Tsong-kha-pa's understanding of emptiness and of the two truths as presented by Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti.... While the exposition is rich in technical detail and textual reference...it is absolutely accessible to the beginning student. It will be required reading in my Buddhist philosophy courses."--Jay L. Garfield, Doris Silbert Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Smith College, author of Ocean of Reasoning and Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way

"Understanding emptiness is the key to the most important aspects of Buddhism--wisdom, compassion, tantra--but is difficult to teach. Guy Newland has drawn on long experience with college students to write a short but rich and pithy guide to emptiness that brims with common sense and apt examples. Anyone interested in Buddhism would benefit from reading it."--Daniel Cozort, Dickenson College, author of Buddhist Philosophy and Highest Yoga Tantra.

This is the final and clearest summary explanation of Buddhism's most perplexing issue by one of the luminaries of the tradition, presented and translated by America's leading Tibetan Buddhist scholar and interpreter for the Dalai Lama.

Tsong-kha-pa (1357-1419), the great Tibetan Buddhist master, directly and systematically addresses a host of essential questions in order to get at the nature of liberation. This volume presents the explanations found in Tsong-kha-pa's Medium-Length Exposition of the Stages of the Path and in a commentary Tsong-kha-pa supplied for Chandrakirti's supplement to Nagarjuna's Treatise on the Middle, contrasting them with views of his predecessor Dol-bo-ba Shay-rab Gyel-tsen (1292-1391), as found in Dol-bo-ba's Mountain Doctrine. By analyzing Tsong-kha-pa's reactions to Dol-ba-ba's views--Tsong-kha-pa's doctrine of self-emptiness and Dol-bo-ba's doctrine of other-emptiness--and contrasting the two systems, both sides emerge more clearly, contributing to fuller picture of reality as viewed in Tibetan Buddhism.